Social Quirk

It's great to be on the other side of that. I worked through that experience and saw the other side of it, gaining a certain level of confidence. But I still often wished this summer that I could sit in on some individual and group work that I could reflect on and emulate (rather than just critique, as I'm prone to).

There are videos around, but any social work student will tell you, it seems like there was a boom in training videos for psychologist and social workers in the 80s that finished in the early 90s. You're hard pressed to find a video that doesn't include big hair.

I got lucky this year with my field placement, though I did advocate pretty hard to get a placement of that kind after last year. I wanted a clinical placement (in contrast to my case management placement last year), with an interdisciplinary team and like case conferencing and psychopharmalogical training. I not only got that (interning at Montefiore Medical Center), but we also have groups in front of a two way mirror. My first few weeks, I watched a bunch of groups held by to psychiatric residents, discussing issues with the clinical director during the groups and with the residents after the groups.

But still, many concepts are hard to get a grasp on. One neat website I came across, that seems very useful is The Psych Files where a clearly eccentric doctor of psychology provides basic tutorials in concepts, theory and practice in clear, understandable language.

Here's a sample:

One my favorite parts of the site is the Audio Psychology Test Prep Tool which gives basic explanations of psychotherapeutic concepts and disorders. It's simplified and clear. While that means it's incredibly limited, it does make it easy to learn the language and then build from there.

Another place to look is the YouTube pages for Psychotherapy.net (here) which has 45 training videos and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (here) which has 56 videos.

Other interesting places to look - the Minds on the Edge, a program that started airing on PBS this month, provides a full-length, online program on issues around severe mental illness in America.

Readers, have any of you found good resources that are publicly available?

Counseling and Therapy in Video claims they provide "the largest and richest online collection of video available for the study of social work, psychotherapy, psychology, and psychiatric counseling." It's 285 videos or 314 hours, from Psychotherapy.net.

Example: This full 1 hour 40 minute video on group therapy by Irwin Yalom is streamed for free. If you purchased it on Psychotherapy.net you'd have to pay $89. Here's a clip.

The neat thing about that site is the videos are organized by therapy type and subject, including full length videos by Microtraining Associates, Psychotherapy.net, and the University of Manchester Department of Psychiatry.

The catch, it looks like it's only for a limited time. In their "About" page they share that all the videos will be available as part of an annual subscription.

I wonder why the NASW doesn't just host the videos they support in the name of accessible continuing education and just have an advertisement roll before, with gratuities going to the producers of the video - like other online video how-to websites.

I also discovered a wealth of free training via online grand rounds available at medical schools, hospitals and university psychiatry departments. It's curious why social work schools don't feature this or hold their own grand rounds. If I'm wrong about this, please send the link my way.

In response to a comment from the last post (Harriet), we do make use of some of these clips in our classes sometimes. The Irwin Yalom videos got featured several times in my group therapy class.

This is what I've found (please let me know if you discover anything else):

- New York Psychiatric Institute -- Video is available for 2 weeks of the months 4 grand rounds.
- National Institute of Health -- Hosts full-length video and podcasts from a variety of agencies, hospitals, universities, etc.
- UCLA Psychiatry Department's Semel Institute -- Provides video & podcasts of their grand rounds since 2007
- Yale Psychiatry Department -- Features videos of their grand rounds since 2002
- OHSU Department of Psychiatry -- Find videos since May 2008

One of the most interesting things I've come across as a social work student and intern are the creative ways to engage clients and assist them in dealing with their presenting problem(s).

Here's one of my favorites:

Decorating a box with clients with eating disorders: designing the exterior as the way you think others see you and the interior as how you see yourself (via writing and pictures)

An idea I think would be useful with people in recovery (addiction, mental illness, etc.) would be to do a brief audio recording with them that could be them simply exploring what brought them to the clinical setting they're receiving services for, what they hope to achieve, etc.

Clients could do one recording each week, after reviewing their previous recording. Ultimately, they'd get to keep all the recordings after they left treatment.

The idea behind this is to have something concrete and real that clients can review. Something that calls for self-reflection and does so in an easy format.

This could be useful for clients who aren't able to journal or who wouldn't be prone to reviewing all their past journals. Also, it provides some basic tid bits that a journal does not - you can hear where the person is at and (as I'm thinking about drug treatment), hear the change in their health and clarity of thought.

As clients terminate, they can quickly see where five weeks has taken them. As clients relapse, they may not be able to see the work they've done or deny the progress they made - feeling like they hit back to bottom. A review of their CD could provide some of the lessons they learned from someone who everyone like to hear from...themselves.

Finally, people are essentially interviewing themselves - something that culturally holds a certain level of prestige as many would associate it with reality shows with their video booth "confessionals" or radio disc jockeys.

In contrast, journaling in a composition book can feel like a return to grade school - not something people necessarily enjoyed or would want to revisit.

There's my idea. Readers, what do you think?

I guess what is informing my ideas of late is the overriding thought that the folks we work with (a.k.a. clients/consumers/patients) benefit from and are respected by giving up some of our privileged status and providing them with a sense of control, reflection and ownership over their work with us (a.k.a. treatment).